Well, John, since you await my next disagreement, I hate to let you down.
You have made assumptions regarding my opinions, beliefs, and knowledge
which are not accurate, and therefore you are disagreeing with a position
I do not hold. I do not have the "industrial mindset;" nor was I using
the battlefield metaphor. That's okay--I was not clear. Allow me to
clarify.
My perspective is from that of motivational psychology. I studied with
David McClelland, the greatest mind in the field and one of the greatest
in psychology (am I biased here? Naaah.), who helped identify links
between individual motives (that is, nonconscious, emotional energy
sources rooted in the mammal brain and predictive of long-term patterns of
behavior rather than choices) and historical movements, business
structure, job success, life success, and health. Motives show predictive
value in terms of careers and life for 8-12 years (see AT&T studies, most
recent version by Ruth Jacobs, 1991), across life as much as 20+ years
(Sears, Maccoby, and Levin followup, see Franz & McClelland somewhere
around 1992, I think).
Now: we actually agree more than we disagree. Let's look:
You said:
First, Lets talk about motivation for a second. First, one of the core
assumptions of motivation is that it is an inner drive i.e, I cannot
motivate someone, A person is motivated to do something because of an inner
need to do either be in community with others, derive meaning from their
activities, or to be part of something wherein they may feel they are doing
something that makes a difference (be part of something special). To follow
one's bliss. To have a sense of purpose about one's life. Senge uses the
term Personal Mastery to say basically the same thing. I base these ideas
not so much on psychology but on mythology, an understanding of the belief
systems that pervade every society. So says Joseph Campbell. This to me is
real motivation.
We need not discuss mythology or our respective opinions: we have more
than six decades of research into actual human motives that resemble your
description (as opposed to conscious values AKA self-attributed motives,
which are also important), as you will lnote from my comment above. The
commonest three (accounting for about 80% of daily thinking time on
average for people) are:
Achievement motive (actually drive to make things better, more
efficient, or innovate; overlaps to some extent with Personal Mastery),
Affiliation motive (personal, friendly relationships with others), and
Power motive (influence and impact--don't be misled by the word Power).
There are many more; some have been studied, most have not. Please note
that these motives (rather than conscious values, again) are very
difficult to move or change. Therefore: Don't try to put motives in
people, engage the ones they have. You can't force positive emotional
engagement on someone. We agree here.
When I said "get them focused on a common goal," I was not assuming, as
you evidently did, that the leader provided the goal. I see (and have
seen) leadership as engaging people to work together with a common
purpose--whether you impose the purpose or enable the group to develop it
is a matter of specific leadership style. That is one level up from my
definition, which is that leaders enable people to work together
effectively towards a single goal. Some leaders take a more authoritative
(not authoritarian) approach in providing big picture leadership (why we
should do this); others use a democratic one and let the goal emerge from
the group. But I have done, read, or competency-coded detailed critical
incident interviews with hundreds of leaders in organizations including
Catholic healthcare execs, government agencies, IBM, mortgage companies,
PepsiCo, assembly line toy factory workers, petrochemical firms,
consultants, etc., etc., etc., and while the styles vary radically, the
core I think is still the same--tap into that inner motivation of the
people, whatever it happens to beso that the group can move forward
together.
I get a little tired of people saying "everything is different now!
everything is different now!" Well, yes, to some extent. But people are
not. I used Julius Caesar to some extent as an attention-getter, but I'll
stick to my guns here. He was a political genius, not just a military
one, and he absolutely did not reach his position just by fear. He was
famous for creating webworks of mutual debt, promises, and genuine
loyalty. For example, he was known for having a fantastic memory for
names and faces--he could literally meet someone once and a year later run
into him on a battlefield ask him about his hometown. Is that ruling by
fear?
And of course he had knowledge workers--politicians? People who
understand government? Spies? Engineers? All of those and more. There
is nothing new about the concept of knowledge workers--only the percentage
of them. As long as I am on a historical rant, 9th-century Vikings
demonstrated strong democratic style--there is a famous story about
someone asking a sailor on a Viking ship who their leader was. "We have no
leader," they said. The longest-running democracy in the world is the
Althing in Iceland. So what's so different?
You also set up a straw man in assuming that I believe the leader must
lead in a way that requires perfect knowledge. Exactly the opposite.
Good leaders in my experience are able to determine who knows what and
make the best use of that.
Saying that leadership resides in a "collective dynamic" is true and
obvious. Leaders lead with the consent of the governed, in the best form
of leadership. But it is very rare to see genuine leadership come out of
a committee. It happens, but I can think of only once or twice out of
hundreds of firms I have seen. Instead, there is usually someone who
takes responsibility. If they are respectful of people (I like the three
categories, too, and have seen them acted on many times), they will lean
more on the group to generate their focus and method--but someone has to
make sure the group is staying focused on what the group itself needs.
TMI, an organization that studies teams, had to add a new role to their
study of team roles: Leader. They found it pushed into their data,
despite their assumptions that it was not required.
Rather than discuss finer points of influence ("manipulation" is a
negative word for what can be a very positive thing indeed) See
McClelland's Power: The Inner Experience for more insight into the
subtleties of mature and socialized power versus immature and personalized
power--what is different between a Gandhi or a Mother Teresa and a Hitler
or Saddam Hussein. See also Kotter's various tomes on leadership.
You said:
The people of our knowledge society are on a journey. A journey towards a
greater sense of democracy. I do not make this assertion, Daniel Bell of
Harvard does in "The coming of the postindustrial society." Bell says that
each successive generation makes a leap from authority and control to
greater freedom. This forms the crux of the social tension we feel and in
many way of what you and I are writing about in our exploration of
leadership thought. I think he is right.
Actually, I lean more toward the grand cyclic than the progressive
interpretation of history. Hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible,
democratic small groups. With the rise of civilization we added more
structure. Now we are progressing back to a more aware democratic
approach, with far more knowledge and tools, and the potential to apply
democratic methods on a far larger scale. But all of this depends on our
ability to educate effectively, so we have an informed electorate rather
than bread and circuses.
Steve Kelner
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